The U. S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee yesterday passed a bill closing 1.2 million (!!) acres of the Wyoming Range mountains to natural gas exploration and production. This highly scenic, unstable, and wildlife rich mountain range is west of Big Piney and Daniel and south of Jackson, Wyoming. Little known outside the state of Wyoming, it is one of those rare places favored for protection from the oil industry by a state’s two Republican senators, a fact that moved it through the Senate Committee.

It still needs full Senate approval and action by the U.S. House of Representatives.

The area to the Range’s the east, the Green River Basin, has become a major natural gas production area of the United States. The Wyoming Range is also favorable to gas deposits, but its complex Overthrust Belt geology means the gas fields will be harder to find and broken up. The gas is likely to be sour (laced with deadly hydrogen sulfide gas), and exploration and production horribly corrupting of the landscape.

“Under the Wyoming Range Legacy Act of 2007, no additional oil and gas leasing, mining patents or geothermal leasing would be allowed in the 100-mile-long area of the range that is part of the Bridger-Teton National Forest in western Wyoming.” Read the rest in the Casper Star Tribune. By Noelle Straub. Star-Tribune Washington bureau

Some photos, I posted to Panaramio of parts of the Wyoming Range included in this legislation.

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Ralph Maughan

Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University with specialties in natural resource politics, public opinion, interest groups, political parties, voting and elections. Aside from academic publications, he is author or co-author of three hiking/backpacking guides, and he is past President of the Western Watersheds Project.

I’ve been following this story fairly closely. Even if this gets through Congress, what are the odds that Cheney will make sure that this is vetoed?

Also, one problem Senator on this has been the Democrat from Louisiana Mary Landrieu; she’s been a problem on so many issues. In DC, she is known as “meddling Mary,” and has done a lot of bad things with the public schools there.

Having both Republican Wyoming senators behind it plus popular Governor Freudenthal makes a straight out veto unlikely, but this should also be considered, it will probably be put together with a number of other public land bills and sent as a package to the President.

The package as a whole will be the determining factor by Bush and whoever it is who influences him.

I hate this omnibus legislation. It is not a responsible way to pass laws because you can’t hold their votes against (or for) the legislators. That’s because they can always say they voted for it or against because of one of the other elements of the package, but that is the way things have been going in Congress for a generation now.

I become more embarrased to have Bush as a president with each article I read. He repeatedly preaches the importance of domestic oil production yet repeatedly does nothing to fund alternative energy production like geothermal energy or hydrogen power. Imagine if we had the $3 trillion from Iraq and found renewable energy options instead of fossil fuels. Now that would be homeland security with visible results. But it just shows how corrupt and entrenched he is with the oil industry. Does he think we are that stupid; or is he so stupid he doesn’t realize that we can see through him?

Hydrogen is not a viable alternative energy. It is a code for nuclear power; the only way to make more hydrogen than it takes to extract it is via a byproduct of the nuclear process. That’s why you get a surprising number of right wingers on the hydrogen band wagon.

It seems that the true enemy of Wyoming is the gas/oil industry. It makes logical sense that, in this case, the WY politicians and wolf advocates would make for great bedfellows. After all, endangered species are a perfectly legal reason not to drill… A shame those politicians can’t see beyond their own noses.

It doesn’t suprised me that “meddling Mary”, from Louisiana, one of the most politically corrupt & polluted states in the Union, would be aganist conservation of any sort.
Jumping to another topic, but somewhat related, was the pathetic performance by Senator Hutchins of Texas (TV interview) who attempted to justify drilling in the National Arctic Refuge in Alaska. She didn’t know the correct terminology, and it was apparent to all who listened, she had no idea what she was talking about. One nonsensical quote: “we are only proposing to drill where the grass grows”. I hope she knows more about economics & how government works than she knows anout the Arctic refuge.

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‎"At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the land and say to the bulldozers, earthmovers, government and corporations, “thus far and no further.” If we do not, we shall later feel, instead of pride, the regret of Thoreau, that good but overly-bookish man, who wrote, near the end of his life, “If I repent of anything it is likely to be my good behaviour."